Creature Features | Nightmare Nostalgia

Nightmare Nostalgia Presents Creature Feature: An ongoing tip of the hat to some of horror’s greatest monsters throughout the genre that don’t seem to get the recognition they wholeheartedly deserve.

Welcome back to the horror show, my nasties. Oh, do I have a good one for you this time around. What could possibly be more bone-chilling than the harsh terrors of everyday life? All it takes is one thing going horrifically wrong to find ourselves entombed within the depths of our very own private little horror show. Oh, it’s quite one thing to be reading about a good, ghastly tale from the comforts of your bed where nothing awaits in the shadows. There’s nothing stalking you in the corner, or silently waiting for you to fall asleep from its perch down the hallway, or standing patiently behind the closet door. As you read that Jack Ketchum book you know in your mind you are – for a damn good certainty – safe.

Then, out of the blue, you hear it. The lonesome howl of the neighbor’s dog, a pooch you’ve pet many times and know very well. Only now there is something unwholesome in the sound he is making under the moon. It’s not the voice you’ve known all these years. This one is feral, touched with sickness, with a disease that it now must spread, an illness dripping from a foaming maul snarling with bloodlust.

This is no demon from Hell, no ghoul from the grave, and it’s not a figment of the imagination. As the dog pounds all of its weight against your screen door, the reality of how soon life can become terrifying hits home a little too well. The thing you see on a daily basis, the friendly pet next door, has suddenly become the instrument of your vicious demise.

This is true horror. This is the genius of Stephen King when he penned the novel Cujo. It’s not about a killer dog, though that essence is there. He wrote a story about how quickly an ordinary life can turn to shit before you have a chance to wipe your ass.

There are a lot of killer dog movies out there actually, but Cujo brings the horror home. After all, what would happen if the neighbor’s dog got rabies? What would you do if your own pet got infected? It all began with a simple little bat bite and it all went to Hell from there.

No monster. No black magic involved.

Just pure dumb bad luck. That’s all it was.

The same can be said for the brilliant international horror, REC. Just a news reporter following firemen around to record their daily activities. And all it took was answering the wrong emergency call for all Hell to break loose. Before they knew it, this untrained newscast found themselves locked inside of an apartment complex where – one by one – the residents fall victim to a bad case of rabies.

This setting alone is disturbing. I used to live on the seventeenth floor of a similar apartment complex. Very alarming to imagine being locked inside during that kind of an outbreak.

Rabies is a common threat that we no longer take seriously. However, as unlikely as it is to face off against demonic entities, a pack of werewolves, or a moaning hoard of zombies, rabies is a very real possibility in our world. It’s that silent horror waiting on the outside of the mind, undetected and comfortably ignored. That is until something goes terribly wrong.

Wheres The Jump — image via Where’s The Jump?

As in the case of I Drink Your Blood and I Eat Your Skin (lovely title, am I right?), a boy very stupidly extracts some tainted blood from a dead dog he knows had rabies. The little fucking bastard then injects said blood into some meat pies that are eaten by townspeople. Yup, they now have to deal with rabid gang members, because, why not?

This is exploitation at its finest. Gritty, gross and absurd.

The infection is not though. Our bodies, our terrifying factories really. We think we’re in charge but oh how fragile that control turns out to be. Against our will, sickness and infection can turn our own bodies into a monstrosity out to do nothing less than send us to the grave.

Let’s return back to Cujo for a moment. He wasn’t a bad dog, but quite the opposite. Loving, gentle and protective of his family. However, once the sickness set in, he no longer could distinguish right from wrong or the good dog from the bad dog. He set out against anyone indiscriminately. The disease baking his doggy senses only left room for one thing to make any lick of sense – kill, kill, kill! To make the pain go away, kill until it stopped hurting.

That’s how good horror works, and may we each only experience it from the safety of our TV’s. On the screen, we watch as normal and everyday homes get turned inside out by horrific events far beyond their control. There are predatory forces out there conspiring against our well-being, and may they only ever exist within the pages of a good read or the TV.

Take care my nasties! Stay healthy.

Be sure to tune in here for more of those warm retro fuzzies, those good old fashion creepies, and for more Creature Feature to come!

I’ll be catching you later.

I DRINK YOUR BLOOD DVD

REC DVD

CUJO DVD

Nightmare Nostalgia Presents Creature Feature: An ongoing tip of the hat to some of horror’s greatest monsters throughout the genre that don’t seem to get the recognition they wholeheartedly deserve.

On the heels of a recent Poltergeist II movie anniversary and what would have been the 98th birthday of one Julian Beck, we won’t just tip any hat, but our oversized black felt-wool head-huggers and sing the gospel of all the “Holy Temples” to the man who gave everything, including his failing health, to a character that will forever be burned into our brains as one of the downright scariest in horror history.

Born on May 31, 1925, Julian Beck wore many hats in the entertainment business, not just the creepy pastor topper we’ve all come to associate him with via Poltergeist II. The on-screen preacher began his love affair with the arts and dabbled in painting abstract expressionist pieces in the early 1940’s until meeting his future wife, Judith Malina who had a tremendously immense passion for the theatre. The love-connection turned into theater history and the pair later founded the prestigious, and often controversial, Living Theater which focused on giving the audience an immersive and shocking experience to take home, reflect, and learn from. Beck, a self-proclaimed anarchist who on several occasions had plenty of trouble with the law, lived by the saying, “If one can experiment in theater, one can experiment in life.” With close to 40 years of embracing these types of convictions inside and out of the theater, Beck’s finest hour came (kind of ironically), in the on-screen role as a passed-on pastor from another time who beat to his own drum as well. I’d say in a way more terrifying and psychotic manner, but you catch my drift here.

Keeping in horror franchise tradition, (although usually via accident-you never know if a sequel will follow) we normally don’t get a whole lot of backstory on the main antagonist. As a matter of fact, the name of Henry Kane was never mentioned once during the first film. Good ole’ Tangina warned of a malevolent presence in the home that she referred to as only, “the beast”. The Other Side, the follow-up four years after the original Cuesta Verde neighborhood nightmare gives us all the answers and a face to said beast with, of course, Julian Beck. And because of his creepy ass performance, I briskly walk a little bit faster past any senior living communities.

His soft-spoken demeanor could go from 0-100 real quick during his little temper tantrums, giving way to a visual about 8,000 teeth in the man’s mouth. Of course, I’m exaggerating a tad but I’d call you a liar if you didn’t think he had an extra set of chompers in there when his face twisted with anger. Besides angry dentures and walking around softly singing culty hymns, Kane’s dagger of a stare was enough on its own to make you avoid this dude walking down the street. Proving that an over-abundant amount of gore and make-up aren’t needed to give someone the skeevies. Not to take anything away from Kane’s other forms in the film including that incredibly EPIC H.R. Giger Tequila-Worm vomit monster (played by Noble Craig). But as Carol Anne said herself in Poltergeist III, “remember, less is more.”

Unfortunately, however, Beck’s look of a resurrected corpse throughout the film wasn’t movie magic but due to a 1983 diagnosis of the often fatal pancreatic cancer. Beck knew his days on Earth were coming to an end and gave everything he had to the role that launched his name into horror infamy. Often in pain on set, and if you look closely into his eyes via the clip above it’s painfully obvious, Beck used his unfortunate circumstances and threw himself into the role of the nefarious cult leader. Little Heather O’Rourke herself was so frightened by his unfiltered skeletal appearance, she burst into tears upon the pair’s first meeting.

I would have run like a bitch too sweetheart.

Today on the anniversary of the life of one Julian Beck, we appreciate his dedication to a role that was to be his last, and sadly never lived to see on screen. I can also appreciate that due to the Kane character, I’ve never wanted to open my door on a rainy day; especially to an elderly gentleman on the other end. Thanks for the eternal nightmares Reverend.